Tag Archives: Josh Hettinger

I am planning a team postal meet with details coming soon and one of the lifts we will be doing is the Shoulder Drop. Here is a good video of JWC member Josh Hettinger setting a record in the Shoulder Drop:

The bar is first cleaned and placed at the base of the neck to start this lift. Feet placement is optional. Once the lifter is upright, and the bar motionless, an official will give a command to start the lift. The lifter will then release the grip on the bar, allowing the bar to drop from the shoulders behind the back. The lifter must catch the bar in the hands at arms’ length behind the back. The legs must remain straight throughout the lift. The lift ends on command by an official when the bar is controlled in the hands by the lifter.

There is actually a reason that I picked this lift as one I wanted to do (and it has nothing to do with Chad Ullom’s Shoulder Drop performance, even if it was pretty funny)

When I was a kid, my grandpa Dalton Jackson (Granddaddy of all the JWC!) used to do all kinds of lifts. Some I’m pretty sure he made up himself, but many he said he read about or saw in old magazines. The thing is that my grandpa often saw still photos or read descriptions and I’m not sure he always got them right. One he did was a lift he claimed Arthur Saxon did. It was a multipart lift where you would Clean and press the weight, then lower the weight behind the neck, do a Shoulder Drop with it, then set it down. But the way he did it was he would catch the weight with bent legs whereas the USAWA rules state you must use straight legs. Since the Shoulder drop was the most difficult of the lift….I decided to use it in honor of “Pop” (what I always called my Grandpa).